


Pink Clouds

by hiddendruid



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Gen, M/M, Mighty Nein as Family, fantasy guilt, head full, many thoughts, spoilers for episode 97 campaign 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22996660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddendruid/pseuds/hiddendruid
Summary: The afterthoughts of one gorgeous drow wizard.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 3
Kudos: 65





	Pink Clouds

The sun is rising in a few hours or so and you’re not prepared for what’s awaiting you outside of the ship’s belly. Inky blue sky peeked through the portholes on the sides of the vessel and what few stars remained winked at you as you held the same position stiff. When the others had returned to their beds, or to the upper deck to lounge in the night air, you remained where you had started this process. No trance could take you, no sleep sway you. You were sitting lonesome and quiet waiting for the sunrise and preparing your skin for the sting that comes with being you.

It’s cold and it’s quiet. You’ve been left alone with your thoughts as usual. However, something had changed in the mind. For the thoughts that drove you to this place were dark and smokey, filling the corners of your brain like a plague, prepared to do whatever necessary to take form in the material world. Tonight’s thoughts lingered like lazy clouds, deep purple and rosy tinged, bobbing and rolling like ocean waves. Tonight, the thoughts in your brain circle around images of the clerics and their faces of sadness and . . .not pity. . .but forgiveness. The thoughts spiral against the grains of the ship’s wooden floor as your feet touched the ground as yourself for the first time in a while. All you can think about is that man with his hands on your cheeks and his lips to your forehead, and how far a moment the cold manacles on your wrists were warm. How for the first time in your life you felt forgiven for both the crimes you did and did not commit.  


You look at your hands which have been freed from its bounds. They hang limp and dead in your lap, the fingers brushing against your cloak. Those hands cost you so much trouble. These hands have woven your destiny like a thread on the loom but now they feel deadened and numb, the fingers not even twitching. You stare at them and you wonder like a thief should you cut your fingers off one by one or should you keep these hands as a penance. _Why is power not stored in the head but in the hands,_ you think to yourself, _am I nothing more than the thief the Empire has made me out to be._  


The sun is rising and the dawn leaks in in tendrils of tourmaline pink. You watch the clouds turn into vibrant colors as the sun warms them from their nightly slumber. As you watch that sun that so plagues your people, you suddenly don’t miss Rosohna. You don’t miss the cavernous, empty space of your old home, where the halls, despite their height, felt like prisons. You reach into your pocket and pick a pearl. You hold it to where his lips met your skin, almost feeling the heat of his breath there. You whisper a second chance into being and you feel the magic leak into your bones.  


You emerge from the ship, steering clear of everyone. Before making your way to the streets of Nicodranas, you put on your mask. Strangely, you feel like yourself for the first time in over 100 years. You weave through the streets back to the home you were granted by the Assembly. You keep your eyes forward and your head full of those pink clouds of thoughts. The sun rises over the ocean.


End file.
